From the 20^th floor of the Wachovia “Gulf Life” Building, the Jacksonville staff of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla) saw sheets white foam blow across the St. Johns River and become wedged in heaps against bulkheads on the north bank of the river. Up close, the foam looked like egg whites whipped to stiff peaks. A man in Fleming Island said the stuff was three-feet thick. An industrial chemist sampled some foam near the Shand’s Bridge with a swimming pool test kit, and he said it contained cyranic acid, a pool chemical.

The following day on Friday, Nelson boarded a water taxi to get a better look himself. He said he wanted to  take a sample directly to the United States Environmental Protection Agency for testing. St. Johns Riverkeeper Neil Armingeon joined Nelson in the bow of the boat with a cluster of television cameras, photographers and reporters trained on them. The  state Department of Environmental Protection Northeast Florida Director Gregory Strong, the city’s Environmental and Compliance Director Ebeneezer Gujjarlapudi and the city’s Environmental Quality Division Chief Vince Sebold were also onboard.

Armingeon had a message for Nelson. Since early spring, there were algae blooms, then more than 350 dead fish and now the foam. “This fish kill will probably go down as one of the largest fish kills (we’ve had). And then the foam issue, I’m not sure if anybody knows what is going on,” said Armingeon.

Nelson asked if the fish deaths and the foam might all be part of the cycle of an algae bloom. The algae robs the water of oxygen and it kills fish and then when the algae breaks down, the foam is part of the biodegradation. It’s caused by too many nutrients in the river, but it’s not an unusual occurrence.

But Armingeon pointed out the fish didn’t die from algae toxins or lack of oxygen. “These are all signs that the river is sick, that it can’t assimilate what is being fed into it,” he told Nelson

Nelson recalled he had run the length of the river in an airboat in 1974, more than 200 miles over three days, from its source to Jacksonville. He said he was shocked during the trip to learn there were 75 outlets in Jacksonville where raw sewage was dumped directly into the river. He said that compared to 1974, the river has been cleaned up. “But you are telling me we still got so many nutrients in the river that it is causing the river to have this reaction.,” Nelson said.

It was mostly a metaphorical moment when Nelson lay on his stomach and scooped  a jar of foam out of the river. The sample hadn’t been collected by strict scientific protocol and probably wasn’t useful as a test sample. But Nelson was mostly there to let his constituents to know he’s concerned about the algae bloom earlier this year, the fish kill and now the foam. He asked the head of DEP for Northeast Florida if they needed EPAs help to test the foam. No, DEP has all the equipment they need, Strong told him. Nelson talked about the river as a great resource, held the jar of foam up for the cameras, and told the story of his airboat ride up the river more than four times.

There was an undertow in the conversation between Armingeon and Nelson. Armingeon wants federal regulation to decrease tthe amount of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus allowed to be dumped in the river. To comply with the Clean Water Act, the state’s farmers, citrus growers, industries and residents will have to change the way they use fertilizers and chemicals.

The United States Department of Environmental Protection has agreed as part of a court settlement to develop rules to govern the maximum level of nitrogen and phosphorous allowed in Florida rivers, creeks and streams. The lawsuit was filed 12 years ago by environmental organization including the St. Johns Riverkeeper. The lawsuit said EPA failed to enforce the Clean Water Act in Florida by letting the state set its own standards.

Next week, a phalanx of legislators, lobbyists and representatives from the fertilizer and agrichemical agricultural, citrus and sugar industries will travel to Washington to lobby members of Congress to take more time on the federal rules, to do new research, to adopt looser standards, and lobby to circumvent the ruling that put the feds in charge.

By October 15, EPA is supposed to establish rules for the state’s fresh water bodies. Asked whether EPA or the Congress has the will to force the citrus growers and farmers on the southern portion of the St. Johns River to reduce their fertilizer and chemical runoff, Nelson said yes, but . . . “There is a need for more accurate data and what I have done with regard to the farms and ranches and citrus groves is to ask, and EPA, they have agreed, to go out for additional data before they make their final ruling.”

Nelson referred Folio Weekly to a staff member for more information on exactly what was wrong with the data EPA has developed. But that information wasn’t available Friday.

Armingeon’s reaction to any talk of postponing the setting of nutrient standards was to say that polluters always think it’s right to postpone because they don’t want to have to change the way they do business.

A bad sign that the state wants to minimize problems in the St. Johns in order to protect the status quo arrived in a press release from the Jacksonville office of the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.  It was entitled, “Fish Kills Common This Time of Year.”

— Susan Eastman

“I felt like I was going in to see Hannibal Lector.”

– What local death penalty mitigation specialist Rosalie Bolin told the LA Times she was thinking the first time she went to see the man who would later become her husband, Death Row inmate Oscar Ray Bolin – a man convicted of the brutal rape and murders of three women.

Rosalie Bolin, who was recently hired by 4^th District Public Defender Matt Shirk, eventually gave up her $375,000 home, her Mercedes 300, her marriage to prominent criminal defense attorney Victor Martinez and her four children in order to marry Bolin. She quit the Hillsborough County’s public defender’s office under pressure, after jail officials suggested she’d had sex with Bolin in his cell. For a link to the eye-opening LA Times story, click here.

To read how the Florida Times-Union completely soft-shoes the hire and glosses over Rosalie Bolin’s past, click here.

– Anne Schindler

Straight from the file containing “Songs that make you want to scrape your own ears off” comes this little ditty, courtesy of Mike Weinstein’s unbearbly white son, Scott Leigh. According to Daily Caller, the state Rep’s son “wrote, produced, choreographed and danced the lead in the music video.” The online publication observed, “the ad would easily fit into an advertisement break during an episode of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ – when the show was still in its prime. And, to clarify, the video is not a parody.”

The item was picked up and furhter savaged by Gawker.com, which issued this caveat: 

Warning: If you watch this video, a campaign song about Florida State Rep. Mike Weinstein, you will be hearing “Mike! Mike! Mike Weinstein!” all day. It’s just thatcatchy.  

So true. Watch it at your peril.

– Posted by Anne Schindler

Jessica Simpson has apparently been in and around the J’ville area, visiting the grandparents of her new Zen-boy beau Eric Johnson. According to US Weekly, which featured the above pic of the blonde starlet arriving at Jacksonville International Airport, Simpson stayed at the luxurious Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, which the magazine hilariously dubbed “modest” - twice.

“They looked cute together,” the mag quoted an “insider,” as saying, who noted the couple spent time with a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door (shocking behavior at a hotel, right?). The insider also observed that while the pair was strolling to their “modest” room, “Her hand was on his butt.”

To read more — admit it, you want more! — click here.

Central Florida’s insatiable thirst for water to dump on its collective front lawn has real causualties — as evidenced in this short video, showing bulldozers destroying a cypress forest in order to make way for the new Yankee Lake water siphoning facility. When complete, the plant (which was approved, despite massive citizen outcry, by the St. Johns River Water Management District) will be able to suck as much as 55 million gallons a day from the St. Johns River. Watch it before you water your lawn:

– Posted by Anne Schindler

If you haven’t been down by the river in the past few weeks, here’s a grim look at what your missing. Andy Leverett, the college winner of the St. Johns Riverkeeper’s 2010 PSA Video Contest put together this video montage of the putrefaction in the river. Watch it on an empty stomach. And if you think of it, give Rep. Ander Crenshaw a call and let him know what you think of his recent attempts to undermine river cleanup efforts.

– Posted by Anne Schindler

A New York magazine story this week details the life of Bernie Madoff at a federal correctional complex in Butner, North Carolina, nicknamed “Camp Fluffy” by inmates. The title of the story is “Bernie Madoff, Free at Last.” A subhead explains, “In prison he doesn’t have to hide his lack of conscience. In fact, he’s a hero for it.” Madoff’s comments and actions behind bars are told to Steve Fishman by Madoff’s fellow inmates (Madoff refused an interview).

The story portrays Madoff as unrepentant for his Ponzi scheme investment fraud. “Fuck my victims,” the biggest con ever in the history of the world purportedly told a fellow inmate. “I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.”

It was surprising to see a familiar face in a graphic that accompanied the article, “Weekends (and years and years) at Bernie’s.” It featured a head shoot of Madoff in the middle of the image looking out from behind bars, encircled by the head shots of 11 other prisoners in Madoff’s prison family. They include Carmine Persico (former head of the Colombo crime family), Franklin C. Brown (former vice-chairman of Rite Aid) and our very own Thomas G. Manuel (who is pictured in sunglasses in the lower left of the graphic). The former St. Johns County Commission chairman is serving 21 months in Butner for demanding a $60,000 bribe from a developer.

The St. Petersburg Times reports that Tampa’s Ford Amphitheatre to be renamed the 1-800-ASK-GARY Amphitheatre.

— Susan Eastman

Despite the belly-up redfish and the floating mats of toxic algae, everything is just dandy in Florida waterways. Must be; why else would U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Jacksonville) be trying to kill financing for a measure to help clean up the state’s polluted lakes and rivers? 

The text of an amendment that Crenshaw is currently attempting to attach to a must-pass appropriations bill would effectively block so-called numeric nutrient standards, which the federal Environmental Protection Agency has said the state must implement to limit water pollution. State regulators at DEP have dragged their feet on this for years, because officials there are in the same deep pockets as Crenshaw. You can contact Crenshaw’s office to tell him what you think of his sneaky, 11th hour attempt to keep Florida’s waters polluted here.
You can read more about Crenshaw’s fealty to polluting interests in the 2008 Folio Weekly cover story “Crenshaw’s Oil Stain.”

 

– Posted by Anne Schindler

After reading a Flog post on the thousands of dead fish reported in the St. Johns River, a reader who asked that his name not be used,  took this picture with his iPhone while walking from the Everbank to the St. Joe building along the Northbank Riverwalk. Although it’s only one carcass, the shoreline of the river is littered with the bodies of good-sized fish and they can be spotted floating belly up  in the river.